Wanderer
by ClarkesLaw
Summary: Callous sociopath? Sadistic killer? Trustworthy friend? Principled warrior?      All of the above.  OC, eventual main cast
1. Act 1: A dance in the moonlight

**_(A/N: I found this lying around on my drive. Don't worry, once I've wedged myself back into the literary groove, I'l turn this into a full story. For now, enjoy__, and don't be too concerned that most of the characters are just faceless names. Rated M for prospective content)_**

**_(I've always found the disclaimer somewhat self-evident. Let it be evident here also. Review if you want to)  
_**

The grasslands of Thessia are beautiful during the day. All vibrant flowers and lush, silver-blue grass, humming with the tiny insect analogues that, in some way, most garden worlds possess. This land has, when sun touches it, been the subject of poetry, song and ardent love letters for as long as the asari can remember.

At night, it is different.

The flowers hide their brightness from the cold sky. The insects curl into balls, dormant and inert. Even the few trees that dot the plains change, closing parasol-like leaves and becoming sticklike, almost skeletal reflections of themselves, dark and vaguely unpleasant shapes against the silver of the moonlit grass. The asari have written poems and stories about this also, but they are tales of vengeful spirits and sad wanderers, cursed never to know colour or society ever again.

At night, the thessian plains are the land of ghosts.

Sometimes, nigglingly, it worries me that I like it out here.

Out here, the babble of voices never touches you. Out here, the world cannot force your attention onto itself.

Out here, there is nothing but you.

A perfect place to think, free from both distraction and scrutiny. Free from the great unwashed and the nosy interloper. A perfect place to be alone with your thoughts.

Slowly, shift posture. Bare feet glide slowly across soft grass, bare torso catching the cold wind without hinting at a shiver.

Focus.

And then, blue light. Not from a lantern, or spotlight. Not from a passing ship dumping drive charge. Not from a comet.

From my hand.

Gently, oh so gently, I stretch the dark energy field I command, moulding it into the convoluted shape I desire. Wisps of energy peel away from the core, their phantom caresses rustling my hair and billowing my pants out like a scene from a bad vid.

Close. So very close.

Not close enough.

Collapse. The stab of feedback pain at the back of my head, implant carrying away the charge building in my brain before it could become chaotic. The sudden wave of dizziness and darkness that comes with a loss of brain electrical charge, quickly subsiding into frustration and anger.

Only one cure for anger.

Picture Pana's smug face after catching me off guard with a singularity. Picture her gloating as she kicks Den'milas in his slight salarian ribcage, breaking three bones. Picture her standing, triumphant, over Teyil, not deigning to help her up.

Strike at the image that forms in my mind.

Left hand jabs forward, towards her face. Right foot slamming into the solar plexus of my shadow nemesis, knocking her back a pace. I leap forwards, rolling in the air and bringing my half-open hands scything down, ready to dislocate whatever limb they catch. My imagination has her flip neatly backwards, biotics carrying her a good 50 feet away, and killing her spin by launching a desultory throw field at my-

Wait.

You probably have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, do you?

Let me start from the very beginning.

My name is Alexander.

This is my story.


	2. Act 1: But be the serpent under't

(Disclaimer: I am an engineering student. If I owned Mass Effect, I'd flog it and buy alcohol)

_2181, November 12 earth time. _

/Text-ref/Nonfict-Pub-2178/Human-English/"The Complete Idiots Guide to: Asari"/p317/anecdote-ref-2/

Let me ask you a question. What do you really know about Asari?

Your average man on the street will think only of tawdry stories, snickered accounts of promiscuosity and opulence remembered from a brief stay on Illium or Omega. Obsessives, derisively called wannablues by their detractors, will wax eloquent on the latest series of Vaenia without any real grasp of the species. The fetishists are best left to their own devices (And I mean this in both senses of the term, as most of these souls will never actually see a real Asari). All of these groups neglect one key fact that should shape any dealing you have with them, one realisation that most who interact with them eventually have.

Asari are REALLY dangerous. Don't piss them off.

A Maiden is a free spirit, impulsive and self-centered, full of passion and energy. When you make an enemy of one, and their mercurial nature makes this easy to do, that energy and passion will be turned against you, their self-centeredness giving them an almost sociopathic callousness. Whether they seek to destroy you financially, socially, or just biotically punt you into oncoming traffic, a Maiden will take great pleasure in your demise.A Matron is perhaps the safest of the asari life-stages, but woe betide anyone who opposes their families, for they lose none of their capacity for violence, and are perhaps even less merciful than their Maiden selves.

Perhaps the most dangerous, however, are the Matriarchs. They are old, and clever, and are perhaps a living embodiment of the difference between empathy and sympathy. A Matriarch is patient to a fault, but patience is not tolerance, and if you are a threat to her interests you should expect her to remove you in the most expeditious way she can think of. Given their vast biotic powers, it is perhaps a blessing that the esteem they command in Asari society makes it so easy to discredit and ruin opponents, meaning that telekinetic skin inversion is a rarity.

Of course, sometimes a warp-field to the testicles is preferable. That (Salarian invective concerning cloacal infection)of a woman needs to (lengthy tirade alternating between High Vol-Speech and Arabic, content censored). I mean, she takes everything I own, puts me on the employment blacklist of every firm this side of Araklah, and she was working on having me indentured to a batarian medical research group before I cut my losses and quietly fucked off.

Now, about that meal…

-Darius Wong-Davies (Phd), AKA "The beggar-genius of Terra Nova"-

/endref/

I gulped slightly. Not the most promising thing to read on the last leg of your flight to Thessia.

Especially when, for the foreseeable future, you can't go back.

((A/N: I told you not to expect regular updates. Maybe when I get a holiday, I'l write moar. As always, review if you damn well feel like it.))


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